The eCrozier

Don’t know much about history
Don’t know much biology
Don’t know much about a science book
Don’t know much about the French I took
– Sam Cooke

There are many things I need to know in order to be a disciple of Jesus, as well as a husband, a father, a friend, and, at least, a semi-decent bishop. You can imagine what those things are. Things such as forgiving unconditionally, showing mercy, living gracefully, being compassionate, listening attentively, empathizing with the other’s lot in life, etc. These are all virtues that one can learn with practice and experience over a lifetime. One might say, with a nod to T.S. Elliott, these are the “knowing” virtues that come with the acquisition of some wisdom and a humble reliance on the grace of God.

There are still other things one needs to know in order to be a competent adult. These are less a knowledge of being and more a knowledge of doing. For a J2A (Journey to Adulthood) Group 15 years ago, I put together a list of 100 adult competencies that teens should know how to do before they could call themselves adults. The premise of J2A is that manhood and womanhood come as a gift from God (if one lives long enough, one leaves childhood), but that adulthood isn’t a given. It’s rather based on achieving a level of mature competency (we’ve elected presidents of the U. S. who, in my semi-humble opinion, never achieved adulthood). My list of 100 things included: how to change a flat tire on a car, how to show respectable etiquette at a dinner table, how to paint a room (neatly), how to explain the second law of thermodynamics, etc. There are real things we need to know if we’re to be mature, competent adults in this world.

But there are things that we don’t need to know. And yet, we do. We do because we live in an age of useless knowledge. And we’re bombarded with this knowledge as we read or listen to what amounts to the news these days. We can’t avoid it. For example, I’m pretty sure I don’t need to know anything about Miley Cyrus’ body gyrations or Justin Bieber’s latest adolescent alcohol-induced escapades, except I do. This flood of needless knowledge presents us with a literal and figurative headache as we try to process all the things we now know and then try to discern the important from the immediate.

Lent is a season for the important where we purposely place the immediate aside. It’s a time when we ask ourselves hard questions about our lives and not run from the answers we discover. It’s a season for us to remember, and not forget, that we know the first, important things about life, and all the other things we know just because we know them, must take a distant back seat. Lent is a return then to our core knowledge about ourselves and about God; that it’s only by the merciful grace of God that we have life. All the useless, distractive, immediate knowledge we face each day means we’re swimming against a strong tide. But swim it we must lest we forget the important knowledge of our unmerited redemption in Jesus Christ.

+Scott